Vote Mitterand in round 2
Socialist Press1981 1981-04-30Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 12 →
Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: expect misread words, and now and then a caption or a line from a neighbouring story. For anything you quote, read the scan.
Scan page 12
The neck-and-neck finish of the first round of the French elections has brought a distinct possibility that Socialist Party leader Francois Mitterand might become the next French President.
He polled 26% of the votes cast-the highest ever achieved by an SP leader. His support grew largely at the expense of the Stalinists of the French Communist Party, which plummeted to 15.3% of the vote-the lowest since 1936.
Divisive campaign CP leader Marchais has conducted a scandalously sectarian, racialist and divisive campaign -while Moscow has made it clear that it favours a return of Giscard d'Estaing to another 7 year term of office.
Giscard took 28% of the votes, with his main right wing rival, Jacques Chirac, now likely to throw his 18% of the vote behind him in the second round.
Turn out
Arlette Laguiller of the left wing Lutte Ouvriere took a respectable 2.3% of the poll-some 600,000 votes for a candidate regarded as a Trotskyist.
French workers must now turn out to vote on May 10 for Mitterand as the only workers' party candidate, while preparing for the inevitable struggle for their demands whichever • candidate is elected.
Special feature on France Mitterand